Shifting moods on Sina Weibo: The first 12 weeks of COVID-19 in Wuhan

Abstract

Better understanding of social media uses in crisis situations can help improve disaster management by policy-makers, organizations, businesses, and members of the public. It can also build theoretical understanding of how social life and citizenship incorporate social media usage. This study tracks the evolution of public sentiment in Wuhan, China, during the first 12 weeks after the identification of COVID-19 on the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo. Data consist of 133,079 original Sina Weibo posts dealing with the novel coronavirus. The relative prevalence of eight different emotion groups is traced longitudinally using the ROST Content Mining System and the Emotion Vocabulary of Dalian University of Technology. The study finds a progression from confusion/fear, to disappointment/frustration, to depression/anxiety, then finally to happiness/gratitude. It argues that this progression indexes the changing affective energies of digital medical citizenship, which in turn indicates the context for intervention in future crises.